1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to furniture made of planar elements which interlock and reversibly unlock without the use of tools, hardware, wedges, pegs or the like. The severely flat surfaces of such furniture result in equally severe limitations on the types of furniture which can benefit from the storage and shipping savings inherent in such furniture. Furniture made under the prior art is typically seen as non utilitarian toy furniture or for utilitarian use only by small children. While conventional full-sized furniture construction uses glue and/or small fasteners installed with tools, planar-tooless construction in forgoing these aids results in rather large unusual looking joints with the result of a second barrier to wider acceptance by markets. A third barrier results from the lack of conventional structural rigidity, particularly in the legs which the flat planar construction yields when plywood or the like is used in furniture scaled to adult proportions. This invention resolves to a greater degree these limitations by affording more conventional structure and appearance and in the case of furniture to be used outdoors by including long term tolerance to weather in order to benefit from the greater design latitude which consumers tolerate to receive the benefits of weatherability.
2. Description of the Related Art
Take apart furniture made of planar components has been disclosed in the prior art. For example U.S. Pat. No. 1,419,647 describes toy furniture which if scaled up to adult size, would be likely to have significant side sway. U.S. Pat. No. 2,518,955 reveals a chair, in which the rear of the seat is not restrained from flipping up and becoming "unlocked" if an adult were to sit near the front edge of the seat. U.S. Pat. No. 3,527,497 reveals a juvenile chair which assembled in part by using pegs and clips. U.S. Pat. No. 2,532,868 offers stiffness by resorting to the use of metal hardware. U.S. Pat. No. 2,720,253 adds additional planar components to facilitate construction. U.S. Pat. No. 4,533,174 discloses a single component, flexible chair of unconventional appearance. U.S. Pat. Nos. 521,395 and 2,486,987 disclose chairs having backs which are not precluded from separation if lifted. All of these patents disclose various elements, but none describes five-part, tooless, traditional looking, rigid-legged, full-sized furniture for use indoor and/or outdoors.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a take apart seating of the most conventional appearance composed of substantially a minimal number of planar parts and requiring the use of no tools or hardware during assembly.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide take apart seating with minimum amount of side sway particularly when sized for adults.
It is an additional object of the present invention to minimize the number and size of connection tabs and related fastening geometry in a ready-to-assemble furniture piece to facilitate a more conventional appearance.
A further object of the invention is to achieve more acceptable plywood edge quality to enhance both market acceptance and weatherability of a take apart furniture piece.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the description which follows, or may be learned by practice of the invention.